So, anyway, I have had lots of time to work today on all the things that get left behind in the whole job thing, the bits, pieces and tatters, that usual, ordinary day stuff. I worked on the web site that I made for clients, took a couple of walk-ins and began research on the legalities of job discrimination as regards to termination of employment.
Very interesting.
I found a lawyer-driven/run site that has a posting forum, in addition to some really stellar information on all aspects of law. I think that what strikes me most, whilst reading there, is how entitled some people feel. Yeah, I work with the public in a variety of locations, situations and circumstances and that informs me, and besides, I am human, too, so I have experienced the issue of entitlement from both sides. A lot. Both sides. I recently dissolved into moderately serious weeping a few weeks ago whilst talking to one of the people at my insurance company when I could not manage to figure out what my health plan covered. I mean, how stupid is that, and it is not like I was having a billing problem or anything, I just wanted information about what might be covered and could not formulate my questions so that they made sense. Even though I was not complaining or whining or being a pain in the ass, I was as uninformed about what I needed as it is possible to be and I was feeling sorry for myself, but much more for the poor woman who got stuck with my call. If anything, I was a kinder, gentler pain in the ass. At least I hope that I was. It does not happen every day, but I often find myself on the verge of crying, with no apparent problem or issue, just out of the blue. In my defense, my life is so fucked up right now that even the slightest disturbance in the Force can reduce me to tears.
So, there I am reading away, trying to find any information that my client might deem helpful and then I had to stop and think for a while because it stopped being about the research and began to be about us humans and our humanness. We humans hate taking responsibility for our actions. Given half a chance, we are perfectly happy to allow someone else to take the flak for anything we mess up, no matter how small it might be. Right now, today, in a town near to here, there is a man the police are looking to find. Yesterday he was stopped for a traffic violation and pulled a gun on the officer who stopped him. He then took off and disappeared into the forest, or what passes for a forest around there. This morning's news has his wife reporting that whatever happened is not his fault because one of the police officers (not sure if it was the one who stopped him) has it "in" for him and that he is disliked in the community because of some issues with child support payments. O.K., then, unpaid child support, traffic violation, threatening an officer with a gun. Please, allow me to be the one who nominates him for citizen of the year. Please.
We hate not being treated as special for all of our personally defined special needs. We transcend hate and go directly to despising when we are informed of how we are not experiencing discrimination or prejudice or just plain rudeness when we do not get what we want, when we want it, and exactly and precisely how we want it. In this respect, we humans suck. Anyone who has worked in retail for longer than an hour already knows this stuff.
So, until the first walk-in arrived at my little cave here, I was feeling like maybe it is a good thing that we have messed up the planet so badly that our Mother (Earth) is just this close to shaking us off the planet, much the way a dog shakes off the water in his fur after a nice bath or a dip in the lake. But, that person brought me back into balance and so did the next person. Then I had a nice lunch and came back to the cave where I spent the next four hours with the nicest person. It was her second session here and I think we have at least one more before we find a way to incorporate all her good stuff into her documents.
So, a nice day, after all. Oh, and I received a telephone call and am being interview and photographed (oh...my...god...no...not a photograph! Like with a camera and everything??? Noooooooooooooooo!) for a newspaper article and I might have a radio interview in my near future, as well. The occasion producing all of this is that tomorrow is my first anniversary doing this work in this place. Remarkable. I stuck with it and they stuck with me and it is wonderful to have this one place in my life where no one hates me or calls me names or threatens me or anything. In this one place, this place for which I am thankful every damn day, I do not suck.
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